lethargic_man | What's in a name?: Kruss

Many years ago, in his speech to me at my barmitzvah, my father told me a particular branch of my family, called Kruss (pronounced Kruz), was descended from a priestly clan called the Gabena Kruss, which was the clan from which High Priests were to be chosen when the Temple was rebuilt. (Not that this meant I was thus eligible, as it is not my patrilineal family, but never mind.)

He said the family used to possess a scroll taking its genealogy all the way back to Temple times, but that this scroll was lost when the family was caught between the two sides of the Franco-Prussian War.

Some years later, I visited an elderly relative in Israel, Betty Schechter (née Kruss), a cousin of my late grandfather, who told me the Kruss family name derives from the Hebrew word for a herald (כרוז in Classical Hebrew, הזכרה in modern Hebrew), as described in the Mishna (Shekalim Ch. 5 Mishna 1):

These are the officers which served in the Temple. [...] Gabini was the herald [kruz]; ben-Gever was over the shutting of the gates.
אלו הן הממונים שהיו במקדש׃ [...] גביני כרוז בן גבר על נעילת שערים׃

She said that the scroll with the family genealogy survived as far as my great-great-grandfather (her grandfather), Shmuel Chanoch Kruss (whose claim to fame it was to have studied with the Chafetz Chayim (R. Israel Meir Kagan 1843-1933)). The scroll in her version was lost when Shmuel, on a visit (from Newcastle) to his youngest daughter Beila, living in St Petersburg, was caught in the outbreak of the First World War. Unable to obtain kosher food, he refused to eat treif and thus perished.

(This is not in accordance with Jewish law; the preservation of life takes precedence over all commandments except the bans on adultery, idolatry and murder; but I could see how the revulsion to eating treif could kick in deep, and how someone might continue put off eating treif in the hope of eventually obtaining kosher food, until too late.)

Since Betty Schechter's version had one generation less to be mangled, and provided sources for some of its evidence too, I took this to be more correct than my father's version.

Now, is there any evidence to back any of this up? In Ezra 2:61–2 it says, about the Jews returning from the Babylonian Exile:

And of the children of the priests—the children of Habaiah, the children of Qoṣ, the children of Barzillai, who took a wife of the daughters of Barzillai the Gil`adi, and was called after their name—these sought their register among those that were reckoned by genealogy, but they were not found. Therefore they were deemed polluted and excluded from the priesthood.
וּמִבְּנֵי הַכֹּהֲנִים בְּנֵי חֳבַיָּה בְּנֵי הַקּוֹץ בְּנֵי בַרְזִלַּי אֲשֶׁר לָקַח מִבְּנוֹת בַּרְזִלַּי הַגִּלְעָדִי אִשָּׁה וַיִּקָּרֵא עַל־שְׁמָם׃ אֵלֶּה בִּקְשׁוּ כְתָבָם הַמִּתְיַחְשִׂים וְלֹא נִמְצָאוּ; וַיְגֹאֲלוּ מִן־הַכְּהֻנָּה׃

Nowadays there are very few priestly families still to have a register of their genealogy going back to (Second) Temple times (and, should the Third Temple ever be rebuilt, I am sure this requirement would be waived), but there are few such families still around; so it's quite possible the Kruss family did have such a scroll (though why my great-great-grandfather had it on him when travelling from Newcastle to St Petersburg I don't know).

What about my father's claim of a specific clan the High Priests were drawn from? Neither Wikipedia nor the Encyclopaedia Judaica had anything to say about this (and the web interface to the online Jewish Encyclopedia appears to be broken at the present). The only thing I could find substantiating this is Rachel Elior's claim in the Limmud talk of hers I attended that one of the reasons for the Sadducees/Qumranites' opposition to the High Priesthood of the Hasmoneans is because they did not belong to משמרת ידייע, from whom the High Priests had always been taken. משמרת ידייע means the Watch of Yedaiah; this may refer to one of the two priestly houses of Yedaiah referred to in Ezra 2:36 and Neh. 7:39, 11:30, 12:19 and 12:21. However, neither the above encyclopaedias nor a websearch turns up anything on the subject; and, bearing in mind the rest of Prof. Elior's talk was pretty controversial, it's possible this is not something generally accepted either.

At the time of my grandfather's death, my father discovered he had been researching something on the subject in an eighteenth century book on the Karaites, called Notitia Karaeorum:

However, since the book is written in Latin and Hebrew it is not easily possible to work out what he was looking for nor where he was going with it.

I, personally, have no idea, but I'm very intrigued; indeed, I'm tempted, given the opportunity, to photograph^* all the pages of the core text by Ḥacham Mordechai^† and go in search of someone fluent in Hebrew to translate them... (Any takers?)

* One does not scan old documents, as the bright light and the ultraviolet hastens the breakdown of the paper.

† Ḥacham (sage) is the term the Karaites, disdaining the rabbinical system, use for their spiritual leaders.

ETA: And then after zsero pointed out what this page was about, I had a look at it, and realised the Hebrew was easy enough for me to mostly translate myself:

Moshe G-d if they were few of Israel who deviated because there is no vineyard without thorns; because even in the time of Moses, peace be upon him, they were not all righteous people walking after G-d.

And behold in the first year of Koresh [Cyrus], G-d, may He be blessed, moved his spirit to build the Temple, but he did not manage to do this, because he was killed¹. Then Achashverosh the husband of Esther reigned for fourteen years, and died. Then his son reigned after him, this being Daryavesh [Darius] son of Esther, who was called Artachshaste [Artaxerxes]. And in the first year of his reign the Second Temple was built. It was seven years in the building and was completed in the eighth year of his reign.

He reigned thirty-two years and Alexandros the Macedonian, king of Greece, killed him², and the kingdom of Persia ended and the wicked kingdom of Greece began. And Israel were beneath the hand of the Greek kingdom before the face of the Second Temple one hundred and eighty years, and after the kingdom of Persia was destroyed and the [last] prophets and Ezra the Scribe died, prophecy was withdrawn from Israel.
This Alexander [sic] came to Jerusalem, in the one thousandth year since the Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt³; and he sought to destroy it a second time, in the fortieth year since the building of the Second Temple.

Shimon the Righteous came out before the king, because he was then High Priest after Ezra the priest, dressed in the priestly vestments. When King Alexandros saw him, he raised him up, and exalted him, and granted him a boon. Shimon the Righteous asked the king not to destroy the Temple, and not to exile the people of the land. And the king was appeased by his words, and did his will, and commanded his servants to do so. And in this matter, he amazed his ministers and his servants, by retracting from his given word to destroy Jerusalem. And he forever did not return from what he had plotted to do.

He replied to them, "I see the image of this one's face, leading me to victory in my battles". For every nation and king has an angel appointed by the Judge of the Whole Earth, as it is said: "The minister of the kingdom of Persia" (Daniel 10:13), "the minister of the kingdom of Greece" (Daniel 10:20), "Michael your minister" (Daniel 10:21). And the king stipulated then with Shimon the Righteous two conditions, the one that all sons that are born to priests in that year should be called by the name Alexandros⁴. And the second that Israel begin to date their documents from that year (for they had then been counting from the exodus from Egypt ever since they left there, since it was like a renewal of the world, and had stopped counting from the Creation).⁵

And Sanballat⁶ [end of page]

This history here, as in the Talmud, is wrong, and loses three hundred years completely. Ezra began the rebuilding of the Temple in 459 BCE, eighty years after Cyrus gave it its go-ahead in 537; Artaxerxes and Darius were different people.

The Darius that Alexander killed was not the Darius I, known as the Great, of the Book of Daniel, but Darius III, a weak king, who fled from Alexander in battle and was killed by his own servants in 330 BCE.

Historical wishful thinking. There is no Greek source asserting that Alexander came any nearer than Gaza.

This account is missing the reason for this, which is that Alexander had demanded a statue put up to himself in the Temple; Shimon had refused, saying it was against Jewish law, but had proposed this as an alternative means of honouring Alexander.

zsero explains: This is meant to explain why Jews used the Seleucid Era, which AIUI the Karaites continued to do until modern times.

Ezra's arch-enemy, the leader of the Samaritans.

As an aside, this page is directly relevant to me, as it repeats the traditional explanation of why "Alexander" is a Jewish name (that, and the fact that Jews name their children after deceased relatives (in the Ashkenazi tradition; living ones in the Sephardi): My father's middle Hebrew name, which turns up in the patronymic part of my own Hebrew name, is Alexander.